Hey, pumped for 04-05? I know I am but I sure am confused. The FIRST site (i.e. http://www.usfirst.org/robotics/2005/chevents.htm) says that '05 Nationals are at the Georgia Dome 4/21-23/04. I know there have been posts about how dissapointing it would be to have Disney canceled :ahh: (SoCal) but I had not read anything about this. What’s the word on the street? You heard anything?
Nationals were in the Georgia Dome last year, and will be there until 2006 (I can’t add :D) at least (They had a 3 year contract, right? Or was it 6?)
Cory
As far as I know it was a 3 year contract, meaning that they’ll be there until 2006.
I think Atlanta is a great location for the Championship event. It is modern enough, warm enough, and has good restaurants, but too many escalators.
so far, atlanta has been the best national site for me. at disney, it was super expensive and eventually got too small, houston was a long way to drag the robot up and down ramps. at the georgia dome, the weather was nice, expenses weren’t as much, the robot walk to the fields were very short, overall it was nice. the escalators weren’t so bad really… better than stairs, waiting for elevators, or ramps…
Someone obviously didn’t get their media passes at Atlanta… :-p
It is a 3 year contract. Last year and this year are mandatory. However, FIRST can change locations next year if they wish to. I know FIRST was pleased this year with Atlanta, so I’d suspect that you will almost definitly have the Championship Event there for that 2006 date, and probably some sort of extension to the contract (unless Disney gets their act together and puts together a great proposal for FIRST)
-Mike
Atlanta was great but only having two elevators to bring tools and such into the pits was not fun. There were quite long lines to get down there and around 1ish all the teams finally got all their pit equipment. Hopefully this year they’ll let us unload underneath (the way we loaded to leave)
I had no problem with having to take escalators.
I did have a problem with it taking 20 minutes to get from the pits to the field without having a press pass.
It made watching matches as a member of the drive team/pit crew incredibly tough.
Yeah our pit crew, and drive team pretty much had to be leashed to the pits, because you just couldn’t easily go view matches and be back in time.
I agree with all of you. The walk from the pits to the fields to watch was way too long. But I heard a rumor that they are changing it for 2005. Can anyone confirm that?
I thought I already posted this, but it doesn’t show up. http://www.usfirst.org/robotics/2005/reg_open.htm says:
ok… what i get from the pits area… i assume that we will have both halls downstairs (one last year was filled from another event) and that will almost double the size of the pits… having 2 divisions in each hall…
but about the walk for the spectators being shorter… i wonder if they will either open up a back way from the pits to the stadium from the downstairs area outside, or if where they had the shirts, if there is a pathway there to get from the pits to the stadium… i guess we will find out in April =D
a friend and i were able to make it from the dome to the escalator above the pits in 5 min for a programming thing that was completly over out heads. but i really liked the nationals in atlanta. (just not the hotel)
As members of the drive team, we walked onto the field floor and up the stairs thru the Lego League Pit, either directly after our own match, or coming from the pits. Perfectly legal as far as I’m concerned. 
I needed to watch other matches and was not about to take the 20+min walk.
Either way, I expect it’ll be greatly improved next year.
I am pumped for Nationals. But the question is, does my team qualify? It would be a sad way to go out, after being there at the start of my team in 2002-2003 and this year as a senior and never having the oppurtunity to go to nationals. I just hope we can raise enough in the bank so we could at least have an oppurtunity this year to go to Georgia if the robot/community service does not carry us.
Even if you cant go with your team, going alone and volunteering would be an AWESOME experience.
I can tell you I had just as much fun volunteering at IRI as I did competing in any competition
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Sorry, but I feel obligated to comment here. I know the robot commute for Houston sucked, but I have to point out that houston was planned on an extremely accelerated schedule after Disney booted FIRST. and it was FIRST’s first attempt at holding a Champs outside of Disney. Atleast a Champs of any real size. So there were many, many growing pains, and I know for a fact that the committee in Houston worked very hard to make things happen and actually pointed out many of these issues ahead of time.
I also know that the Houston committee is very, very supportive of FIRST and is working to get FIRST to return as soon as possible, cause we think we actually have a very good venue here if properly utilized.
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